"There was a deep loneliness to karting, and then definitely in single-seaters, because no one else was going through the same thing as me, says Susie Wolff as she remembers her long struggle in motorsport, from racing as a teenager against Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg to her determined, but unfulfilled, quest to become a Formula One driver."
"After the whole #MeToo movement, we forget what it was like before. But the way I heard boys talking about girls in the paddock made me think I never want to be spoken about in that way. I realised I'd have to be whiter than white to get through it unscathed."
"I couldn't open up to anyone until I met [her husband] Toto. But I'm definitely happy that the next generation will never have to go through that because there's a camaraderie in F1 Academy. These young women have other women they can look up to or reach out to and there won't be that isolation I felt."
Susie Wolff experienced deep loneliness and isolation in karting and single-seater racing because no one else shared her experience. She encountered sexist talk in the paddock and believed she had to be "whiter than white" to avoid harm. She could not open up about her struggles until meeting her husband Toto. Wolff now serves as managing director of the F1 Academy, founded in 2023 to develop female racing talent and ultimately produce a female F1 driver. She notes a surge in girls in karting and emphasizes the camaraderie and mentorship in the F1 Academy that prevents the isolation she faced, while recalling that pure speed alone was not enough and she had to cultivate aggression to compete.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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